Multilitteratus Incognitus

In my quest to finally catch up with everything that I've saved in Pocket for the last month, I came across a post written by Rebecca (luckily not that long ago) where she asks: Should those who study social media communities be required to  inform the community of the research results? I think that this is both an easy, yet a very complicated question!  I believe that the ethical  thing to do is to post to that community once your research is done (if not earlier) to let them know.  If it's on twitter for example I would expect the researcher(s) to post something on that community hashtag to indicate what the research was about and what the results were.  It's fairly easy (and free) to setup a Google Site or a Wikispace, or even a Weebly site to post a few pages about the research, you as researcher, and the findings.   Personally I think that it would be good, for research purposes, to invite  commentary from that community so that they cou...

It's been a few weeks since I wrote anything about the NRC01PL cMOOC that was running last month, and that I caught up a bit on and wrote a few posts about.  The final week of the course was labelled applications and extension, but I didn't see any content for the course posted.  Not that one necessarily needs content (I think the Rhizo MOOCs showed that), however you do need something. This got me to thinking, and more specifically about Terry Anderson and his interaction equivalency theorem , which... In a nutshell the theory posits that if any one of student-student, student-teacher or student-content interaction is of a high quality, the other two can be reduced or even eliminated without impairing the learning experience–thus creating means of developing and delivering education that is cost affordable for all of us. Peer-to-Peer interaction was a bit problematic for NRC01PL from the start. It seemed that gRSShopper didn't really work, and I only got a few ...

Well, after a couple of month of not paying the Ning bill UMassID.com is dead!  Well, the domain is still fine, @cdetorres got that one for 10 years, but the Ning community that it pointed to is pretty much dead. So what is was UMassID.com? Well, back in 2008, when I started my MEd in instructional design, the outgoing class was looking for a new president for the student association (GIDA - Graduate Instructional Design Association).  This association - I later found out, started at some point in the early 90's (the program began in 1984). Since I didn't want to see the hard work of previous officers go to waste, I thought I would step up and take over the presidency.  At the time, someone's final project for a course was to look into communities of practice, and as part of it they created a Ning community , which at the time provided freemium service, so for the student the community was free. Within a few months of taking over I discovered that the network...

I was going for a News show feel with that title. I don't think it came across.  The more I think about it the more I am thinking that video might satiate my dramatic tendencies - but that would take more acting talent and more time.  It's just text for now! If you have an idea for a name for a Mock News Show (like the Daily Show but for EdTech, drop a comment ;-) ) So, week 5 Rhizo15 - this means that there is only one more week left if I am not mistaken. Dave talks about the doom and gloom of community . It's such an invasive species.  It assimilates all that it touches. Oh my!  Just to set the stage here Dave asks if community is just replacing one authority - the instructor - for another, which I would guess he means the Hegemony of the Group.  Is the course becoming an echo chamber?  Does the rhizome choke the air out of everything it touches? I am pretty sure that Dave is being controversial here (surprised?) and possibly a little tongue in c...

I guess this is one of those self-congratulatory blog posts ;-) I'll try not to be too cocky about it :-) Anyway. Recently a colleague of mine sent me this blog post from the .eduGuru blog . The blog post is interesting to read so you should go ahead and do that. The quick highlights though are these: 1. College wants to do something exclusive for new students 2. College creates online exclusive community 3. College uses Ning to do it. There have been many instances where I've had ideas for things that would make student's lives easier, but this is one idea that I actually grabbed and ran with it - and the result if the UMass ID community on Ning . Of course my goals weren't just to welcome new students. My goal was to create a community of practice made up of current students, newly accepted students to the program and of alumni. People can come and be welcomed by a community of practitioners, they can find information about the program (what they need to do to gra...